Paintings by Lehan Winifred Ramsay
Ships
01 Friday Apr 2016
Posted in Lehan Winifred Ramsay
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Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle
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01 Friday Apr 2016
Posted in Lehan Winifred Ramsay
Paintings by Lehan Winifred Ramsay
So it took me four days to figure out what I was trying to say, which was that I was aware that from the leaf paintings to the ship paintings my painting had become ill, that my illness was apparent to me in the contrast of the two sets of paintings. The colour becomes lurid, the painting style becomes rougher, and although I have covered up the earlier paintings, which are of a face, they become much more about a face than they were. This is a very beautiful thing to me, that I can see some diagnostic quality about them. I very much appreciate the time you spent talking with me on this page because I wouldn’t have got that far without you.
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Yes, diagnostic, I think that is what I was trying to say about my offspring. Perhaps the rest of us have such mundane jobs that we barely notice our own mental state.
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As an example, Big M, if you as a medical practitioner were able to track your mental state through your work, we would say you were unprofessional. The point of your work is that you should be able to produce the same level of work regardless of your state of mind.
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Yes, I guess that’s correct. I think that artistic folk, like yourself, are tuned to everything, your own mental state, the environment, etc. It shows through your work very easily.
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Well that’s another part of being creative. Creative people are trained to be sensitive to things. So they’re more likely to be affected by depression and other illnesses.
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Creativity is much more acceptable than it used to be.We are much less socially isolated in a practical sense. We can be in the country and still able to access many things through technology. That has made a big difference to the experience of living in isolated areas. It has made a big difference to how we can live in our communities. So many things that we would have struggled with in the past have become very different. If we want to find a community we do that online. We don’t have to conform as much as we did. So, creativity isn’t quarantined the way it used to be. But if creativity is sensitivity, then we are causing more mental ill health by making it more acceptable to be not the same as everyone around us. Somehow, being more acceptably ourselves does not lower the level of mental distress in the community. Perhaps that is because we do not cohere to our immediate environment as we used to. Or, as you say, perhaps the creative endeavour itself creates or encourages mental distress.
It is my feeling that it is likely to be a little of each. We get distress because creativity makes us sensitive to things so it is a hazard of our profession. As well we are a little sensitive to things, so we are creative, creativity is a hazard of being sensitive.
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The thing is that I usually always like the paintings I do. And they’re pretty quickly finished. These two paintings, I thought oh dear. But the ones I’m doing at the moment, even before I started them they didn’t look good.
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Whereas those leaf ones, I did like them. I still look at them thinking they’re beautiful.
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These are landscapes. But as you can see, they’re also a face, and large shapes are spread out across that face, and the ship is sailing across it. It makes me wonder if each painting is a kind of scan.
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At the moment I can’t read the news. There are quite a lot of things I can’t do. I’m not sure why. These things are making it hard to be able to enjoy the days. I’m not functioning properly. I don’t know how to. Normal things are blockages. You can see, in these paintings, that the usual lightness is absent. Normally I wouldn’t mind, how they worked out, because generally how they work out surprises and delights me. These ones, though, I’m stuck, I’m trying to get through, to paint, but I can’t.
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These paintings are not my expression. They are more like writing lines. The first drawing was the expression. Unfortunately it wasn’t that good, and these facsimiles are also not good. My question, for myself, is what are the ones coming after going to be like? Look at the leaf paintings, and then these ship ones – you can see they’re actually containing similar elements. But the ship ones are broken down.
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Mostly, even if we have mental illness, most of the time that illness is not ill. It is just different. But here, my mental illness developed an illness. Thus, my paintings developed an illness. It’s not necessarily horrible. Myself, I don’t particularly like it.
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See? Often you may assume that painting is pretty mindless. But I think it isn’t. It’s just not mind. It’s hand. Music, too, is not mind. It’s hand (sometimes that hand is mouth).
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Does creativity cause mental illness? Does creativity allow a view into mental illness?
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Good point Lehan, I’d say anecdotally yes however science may disagree.
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PS: Maybe the mental illness comes from a lack of recognition in society seeing that we really just got out of the trees and Maslow then determined our most immediate needs.
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That makes me wonder: is it my creativity that causes my depression, if I had chosen some other path would I have been less vulnerable to depression. Anyway I have number 4 terrible ugly painting to make.
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In music Lehan, you keep going till you get it right, is painting the same?
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No not for me, Mark. I do it, I take what comes, it doesn’t always work. Usually I’m not dissatisfied with it, usually there is something that I’m not expecting, that gives me pleasure. With these ones, though, I’m looking at them and feeling embarrassed. I could try to make something better with the last two. They’re rough and thick. But usually they’re not TOO rough, TOO thick.
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I was about to make a comment about artistic people giving me the shits because they often paint over, burn, destroy something that I (like Mark) thought was pretty good. Then I thought about my work, where people often compliment me on a difficult procedure, medical management plan, or dealing with crazy/anxious/ or even violent parents. My response is to downplay the whole thing. “A monkey with someone’s hand up it’s arse could have done as well.”
Perhaps artists are the same, it’s only 98% good, therefore it’s no good.Perhaps our own natures drive us to deprecate the very things at which we excel.
Forgive my rambling, Lehan.
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Wow, fantastic Lehan, love them, keep them coming
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Thanks Mark, and thanks Lindy, and thanks all of you for your kindness.
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No problem Lehan. I have protanopia and struggle with matching colour plus I was never any good at drawing so I’m lost a lot of the time with art. What I have learnt over time is just be honest. If you like it say so and vice versa. I can play blues guitar pretty well and people find my stories funny but I still envy you arty folk.
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I can often paint quite well, Mark, I think of myself as a painter. And yet at the moment I am looking at what I am doing and really wondering how I can think of myself as a painter. That is weird, at the end of this will I still be a painter, or is this going to tip me out of the boat.
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Not at all Lehan, once a painter always a painter, same with guitar. I haven’t played much in the last decade but after a bit I can still play pretty well. It will all be good with time. As a chronic depression sufferer I know this from personal experience.
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I agree with Mark. Seeing your work Lehan, I think you’re a painter too
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I might try a brush.
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I do hope you find more shop windows Lehan,. Sad to hear of your battle with anxiety . Love the colours you use.
I find a group session of life drawing a quiet and meditative therapy – a glass of red, low spotlights on the model in a resting pose, and middle eastern music ……magic.
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You almost got me there young lady 🙂
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They’re horrible. I also am horrible, I feel a kind of anxiety at the moment that is a sign of a pretty serious mental condition. I’ll work on getting through to Tuesday without any initiative of any kind, and that might be a positive step.
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Baby steps Lehan. Celebrate the wins no matter how small they might be. They aren’t horrible but they are different to your usual work.
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Algernon at the moment I am working on six paintings that are all from the same drawing and all equally terrible. Although I think they may be improved by the time I finish them. I have finished two of them (they are very simple).
Baby steps. Today I was thinking that I don’t know what this means yet, why I had to so suddenly give up what I was doing. I don’t know what it means.
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Lehan, my youngest is a talented artist in the making who has given us great joy with some of the work she produces. We were very excited when she was accepted to University to study Visual Arts, she had great plans, she hated High School but recognised she had to do it get to her ultimate goal. She also though she’d put pieces in the Archibold and Moran Prizes. Unfortunately she lasted all of about 6 weeks. The depression hit. Art that has always been therapeutic to her stopped.
We celebrate the baby steps with her and the small wins, knowing that more will come. Last year we had no hope nor did she, now there is much and plans to go back to uni next year. The art isn’t there yet but at least her art diary is.
Lehan I love your art work and I know it gives great pleasure to all of us here at the Pigs. You are still producing and that is a win in itself.
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Thanks, Algernon, sometimes them just surviving is enough, an art diary is a bonus.
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I was about to hop in and post ‘aren’t they lovely, the colour, etc (which is true), but remembered a painting by my youngest, quite artistic, son. The art class had been to the beach. The other kids had painted blue skies, yellow sand, smiling happy people, etc. He had painted something that was almost completely black, with the faintest scene etched into. He claimed that the rocks are black, so, the rock pools, especially when contaminated by a small amount of oil, reflect the scene against a black background. This, we realised in retrospect, was the first sign of his depression.
I guess what I’m saying is, that if you can monitor your mood by your paintings, then you can use that information to seek help. I’m hoping that there are sufficient resources there!
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My depression didn’t go away, when I moved back to Japan. I just functioned with it. But something needs to change. I can’t go on like this.
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I don’t think depression ever fully goes away. I think we learn to manage it, whether that’s with medication, exercise meditation, etc, or all of the above.
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I’ve never felt this way before. That surprises me.
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Actually I think I’ve come to a depth of depression that I’ve never experienced before.
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I love the richness in these new paintings – and the multi-layering (if that’s the right term). For me that have a Fauvist flavour.
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recycling….
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In February I painted over some of my old paintings, and the result was terrifying. The paintings were very rough. I didn’t particularly like them, but I also didn’t think they were irrelevant. Rather, they seemed to signal to me that there was a big change coming in my painting. That’s the ship, you see; it’s some change coming to my painting.
I’ve done a few paintings since then. It isn’t that I’ve lost my ability to paint. But there is some end and a new beginning and it is not necessarily a good thing. On top of that I’m wondering at the waste of having so many paintings that never really do much except take up room and money.
But I’m setting up again. We shall see how things go. Three years ago I managed to find some shop windows and rent them for $50 a month, and I put my paintings in there for about six months. That was a really good solution. But there is no shop window now that I can use.
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